Khalid On Comparative Politics

  Hello everyone! Welcome to the second installment in my blog. Whilst last week we mainly dealt with introductory proceedings and discussed the virtual calls. This week we will be tackling our first question. This question revolves around the concept of self and others, delving into issues such as what groups we experience ourselves and what we experience as others. By nature, this would immediately affect the way we thus perceive these groups. But before we get ahead of ourselves, I should first explain what I mean by self and others. This concepts refers to how we perceive ourselves and which groups we belong to and by extension, how our attitudes, behavior, roles and obligations differ based on these circles in which we identify ourselves. To begin, I personally identify as being both Arab and Muslim. I say Arab as I am both Emirati and Omani and therefore by being a member of both groups I increase the scope of my nationality. By identifying as either or I would, as a result, ...

  Last week we had the pleasure of conducting an online class with students from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. It was a great opportunity to converse and the call was effective at facilitating discourse between us and the students! Half-way through the class, we were divided into several breakout rooms and this provided us with a great chance to be able to get to know the other students. We were given the prompt, “If powerful aliens came to Earth and there was no language the humans and aliens could use to communicate with one another, what in the world would you show them to convince them that our species is worthy of survival?”Shortly after joining, I was greeted by two kind faces and we immediately hit it off. We discussed similarities that we had, from musical tastes to entertainment and for a second we completely forgot about the prompt. It was great to see that despite the different lives we lived and the distance between us, there are certain binding factors that allow ...